Dine Another Day With Lime & Tonic London

Last week I received a rather mysterious message from Lime & Tonic London inviting me to a dinner at a secret London location for their new ‘Dine Another Day’ experience. Being a rather adventurous soul I didn’t feel that I could refuse, so I replied in the affirmative and was told to wait outside the office early on Wednesday evening for my private transportation to arrive…

Expecting a big black car of some description, I got the first surprise of the evening when one of the classic minis belonging to the specialist London tour company, Small Car Big City pulled up outside. These guys offer all kinds of tours in their little motors that take in everything from the regular circuit around the central London sights to races across the city, where the guests are kitted out in boiler suits emulating The Italian Job while they make their way across town to reach a particular destination!

Now I’ve been sworn to secrecy on our destination (this is a new group event that Lime & Tonic are currently trialling, and myself and a large group of food and event journalists were their guinea pigs for the night), but when we arrived we were ushered through the hotel’s back corridors to be deposited in a very chic outside bar area. After sipping on a glass of champagne (or two) and tucking into some rather odd canapes (frog’s legs kiev and pig head croquettes!) we were introduced to our guides for the night, who explained what we had let ourselves in for…

Split into two groups, the guests were tasked with discovering the identity of a secret agent working for the ‘other side’ – we were then led, blindfolded by bondage tape (!), to our first clue in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms. After sitting there in the dark for a while and smelling a particularly strong odor (the first clue) it was time for our first proper dish of the evening and our first accompanying beverage – beautifully cooked Orkney scallops with Yorkshire chorizo, washed down with a generous glass of some very good Chardonnay from the south of France…

Our trail of clues then led us throughout the entire hotel while simultaneously involving just about every section of their extensive menus – beef sliders and a potent Cuba Libre cocktail in the very well-appointed super suite which comes complete with a huge conference table and several Bang & Olufsen TVs, and then more cocktails (one of them using the infused smoke from burning camomile!) in the games room, which has a rather charming wall of traditional board games as well as table football – not something you see very often these days!

Our search then led us down to the ground floor to their eclectic street-facing restaurant for a more-ish kashmiri lamb curry washed down with product from Greenwich’s Meantime Brewery, and then up to the rooftop restaurant for a chocolate fondant with cherry yoghurt ice cream and even more cocktails – so many more that I lost count before the end of the evening. If anything, there was too much booze, particularly for a ‘school night’!

lime tonic london dine another day

Despite our increasingly inebriated state our group zeroed in on the spy’s identity by about half way through the experience – I won’t reveal who it was in case they use this person as the subject again, but I can report that we had a rather good time overall. I think that their idea of combining a spy game with the opportunity to check out just about every aspect of a chic 5 star hotel was quite inspired – I’m not sure how much an evening will set you back as a member of the paying public (given that this is their newest venture they’re understandably a bit cagey about the price at the moment) but it certainly made for a unique and decadent night out…

lime tonic london dine another day

Lime & Tonic’s London offering dubs itself as a ‘social concierge’ – it won’t surprise you then to learn that their target market is well-heeled people with little time on their hands who want to have a premium experience without having to search through endless pages of the dreaded Trip Advisor. Although their main focus is top-flight dining experiences – tables at top restaurants for romantically inclined couples, gourmands, high-powered business dinners and the like – they do offer other things to do. Search through the London listings, for example,  and you’ll find bespoke tours from the previously mentioned Small Car Big City people, murder-mystery nights from our friends over at Thinking Bob and even sushi-making classes.

The guys who run Lime & Tonic were keen to impress a few things on me during the evening, which I’ll pass on here – firstly, they tell me that they mercilessly vet the experiences i.e. any complaints by Lime & Tonic guests about a particular evening are investigated, and if the venue’s explanation of what happened doesn’t come up to snuff then they’re summarily excised from future listings. They also have a reward system in place – as you tailor your profile and attend events your membership level increases, revealing experiences that have previously been hidden (I’m told that backstage encounters with big theatre stars have featured on the site in the past, for example).

Lastly, I was asked to mention the fact that Lime & Tonic don’t just operate in London – you can also use them when you’re travelling as they now cover four cities in mainland Europe (including their HQ city, Prague), three North American and two South American destinations, three spots in Asia, two in Australia and even Cape Town. Check them out if you’re in the mood to push the boat out for a dinner with your significant other one evening – I’m assured that you won’t be disappointed! If you’re on the move they’ve also got a shiny smartphone app, although disappointingly this is only for iPhone – there’s nothing for Android as yet.